Nuts and Bolts review

Andrew Todd, Family History Nuts and Bolts Problem Solving through Family Reconstitution Techniques (Allen and Todd, 2015)

I was delighted to know that this useful little book had been re-issued in 2015 as I had been recommending the previous edition to my students for years.  The newer edition is nearly doubled in size and well worth the £8 cover price.  Todd sets out to convince us that we should be researching whole family groups rather than individual ancestors and his arguments for this are good ones, with many interesting examples showing how research problems can be solved with these techniques.  A highly readable text is combined with equally useful and original diagrams.  The whole book is packed with tips and interesting insights into common problems we all meet with in our research.  It will be of great benefit to beginners and yet somehow also manages to contain plenty of interesting ideas to inspire those who have been doing research for years.  Although it is intended for use with English records on the whole, the techniques and lessons within it can be applied to family history over a wide range of different records. I urge you to buy it.

(reviewed for a magazine, 2015)